Pre-Spring 2017 season

After wrapping up what I consider to be a distinct training block this past weekend, I wanted to consolidate my thoughts on the past three months as well as the upcoming spring season. 

The last 12 weeks of training have been at least as good, if not better than, any 12 weeks of base training have ever been in my career. I averaged over 100 mpw, with workouts gradually building up from short and easy in the beginning to race-specific by the end. Most importantly, I still feel mostly on top of the training, instead of buried under it. I consider this to be a wrap to the base phase because of the impending 10 mile race at Club Challenge this weekend, which in my mind kicks off my spring season. The races I have on my calendar currently are: 

2/26: Club Challenge (10 mile)

3/5: Tim Kennard (10 mile)

3/19: NYC half

4/2: Cherry Blossom

4/23: Pikes Peek 10k

4/29: Race against Racism (5k)

5/6: Pittsburgh Half

Races in bold are peak races. 

In my mind, the key difference between this base phase and last summer is that I did all workouts and runs by effort rather than putting a watch to anything. Last summer, I feel I overtrained because I was pushing too hard every workout to hit some arbitrary goal I made up for myself. This cycle, until about 2 weeks ago, I never wore a watch or took splits in a workout. I did everything on a course that I knew the distance beforehand, such as a track or the PP loops, which made it easy. In the last 2 weeks I have started timing workouts as the races get closer and I want to be more specific in the training. 

Another aspect I added back in during the last 4-5 weeks is dedicated hill workouts. I have never really been a big fan of serious hill workouts having a long-term place in a training cycle, because I have always considered other workouts more valuable. However because this was a base phase fairly far away from the big races, I decided to add them in for variety. It's hard to put my finger on any clear changes or improvements that I might have derived from these workouts, but I feel stronger and like my stride has had small changes made that make me more powerful and efficient at speed. Again, sounds kooky and hard to nail down, and maybe it's all in my head, but the placebo effect is still an effect. 

With such a good base under my belt, I am cautiously optimistic for the 10 miler this weekend. I say cautiously because I always try to keep my expectations in check before a race, because I know it will still be a hard effort on that course, but I haven't raced in a long long time so it'll be nice at least to get a reliable fitness check. To that end I am taking the week before easy and dropping mileage a bit to not go into the race tired. Should be a good effort and a very good workout as well for the big races yet to come. 

Overdue fall 2016 update

It's been a while since I wrote down anything in here. August twenty-eighth, in fact, was my last entry, and that's because I don't like writing (or reading, or talking) about running when I'm pissed off at it. I had what was, for me, the worst season ever, which really isn't saying that much because I've been #blessed to have an almost injury- and sickness-free career up to this point. Unfortunately the weird sickness, or reaction, or full-body freak-out, or whatever it was, showed up a total of three times this summer and fall and basically trashed any chance of me putting together any good training and racing, so after the third time it happened I threw in the towel and took a total of 5 weeks either off or very easy. I think I actually took 2 weeks off and ran like 30-50-60 for the next 3 weeks.

Once those three weeks were up it was late November, and I figured I might as well see how I was doing. I bumped the mileage hard and for the next three weeks (up until now) I ran a lot and gradually increased the workouts systematically as follows:

Intervals once a week, starting with 8 x 200 and adding 100m to the length each week. So it went 8 x 200, 8 x 300, 8 x 400, etc. Recovery was adjusted to be reasonable.

Tempo once a week, starting at 4 loops around the park (4 miles) and adding 1 loop each week.

This worked fine at first until I went to Boulder to visit Feeney (who I'n sure I mention in the early entries of this log) and was on his schedule. We did a hard half marathon workout of 3 x 2 miles for him, because he is in good shape and racing Houston in a few weeks. Then we ran almost 2 hours the next  day and an "easy" 10 miles the day after. This trip was fun, but wrecked me because of the cumulative effect of fatigue brought on by altitude and hard training.

Once I got back to Baltimore, I got back into training and plan to continue on that above schedule for some time until racing starts. This was I think I can get into shape without forcing it too quickly.

The most important change I have made since getting back into it for real has been not timing anything. Since the intervals are on the track at PP high school and the tempos are around a 1 mile loop, I know all the distances and don't need to time anything to know how far I've gone. So far I've been working out 100% by feel and have been feeling pretty damn good. I know myself pretty well, and I know that if I start timing the workouts I'll start inching the pace down too hard to try and hit splits I think I "should be" hitting, or racing previous versions of myself from last year when I was in the best shape of my life. I know that that's dumb, but I also know that so much of my self-confidence and ego is based on running fitness that even despite my best intentions I'll still be stupid about it. So, I haven't been timing anything and as a result I really don't have a clue what kind of shape I'm in. But who cares? It's December, and the first really big race I care about isn't until April 2nd (Cherry Blossom). So I've got basically three months plus to get into great shape.

Great segue there into the racing schedule. I just applied for the Saucony Hurricane team, and one of the questions on the application was a tentative spring schedule so I was forced to look up races I want to do. Since those are fresh in my mind I figured I would add them here.

Big races: Cherry Blossom, Pittsburgh half marathon. These are two races about a month apart that I really want to knock out of the park.

Other races added in around: club challenge, Tim Kennard, Pikes Peek, Shamrock 5k? Delaware half?? I originally assumed that Pitt and DE were the same weekend but turns around it's a weekend apart. Even so doing two half marathons on back to back weekends is a very tall order, but I might still do it...for the scrilla.

I've never done Shamrock, but if I can get those goobers at CCR to comp my entry I would like to do it. It's the most competitive Baltimore City race so I think I would be remiss not to do it when I'm in good shape.

That's it for now, I hope to continue logging high mileage, moderate workouts and feel good doing it.

Can't catch a break

Up until about 2.5 weeks ago, training was going as planned. I had resumed training in the beginning of June and gotten in some good work through most of that month and July, with two down weeks planned for vacation during which I still managed to get some running in. After getting in very good training back from those vacations, I ran probably the best workout of my life and immediately got sick. When I say immediately, I mean I jogged home from the workout in the park, showered and started getting chills and not wanting to eat. I was sick with fairly high fever for four days. I started running again, felt bad all week (not entirely unexpected, but very frustrating) and after a mediocre long run that following weekend picked up a muscular injury that has now bothered me for a week. 

I need to be rational here and take my own advice, which would be take a couple days OFF (no cross training bullshit, actually off) and treat the hell out of it and hope for the best. What frustrates me the most about this is the timing; this could not be worse unless it was right before the Big Race. Right when I want to really be crushing the specific workouts, I am hamstrung in my prep right now and can see a PR slipping away as I sit around unable to gain any fitness because I can't run. What's also frustrating is that it seems as though I can't run in the mornings but can run later in the day once whatever the problem is has warmed up/loosened up. Normally I wouldn't care and would power through, but considering the races are all in the mornings, if I don't get this sorted out ASAP I'm totally fucked for racing, even if I can work out just fine in the evening. Just trying to keep my head up and hope that this will go away quickly so I can get back to work before there's no point in even showing up to the races. 

Mid-cycle update, summer 2016

Currently I am about halfway through the Chicago 2016 training cycle.

Intermediate races planned, all hard training efforts:
8/20/16: Druid Hills 10k
9/11/16: Parks half marathon

Goal race:
10/9/16: Chicago marathon

Currently I am training well, barring a couple weeks of lower intensity/maintenance work due to two separate two week vacations. One of those I maintained well and got 80+ miles, the other I ran nearly every day but was also at high altitude (8000+) the entire time so it probably balances out.

Training from here on out barring any interruptions will be fairly straightforward. Almost all workouts will be marathon-specific or supportive, as best as I can manage in this east coast summer weather. The occasional shorter speed workout might creep in, but only if I have an awkward time gap between workouts and I haven't done something quicker in a while. The goal will be to run 14x every week and something near 120 mpw. I do not expect to do this week in and week out, but it is always the goal to shoot for.

Currently the fitness is right on track. This past week featured brutal heat and humidity with at least one day setting or tying a record. I still managed a solid long run workout both weekends and a 45 minute hill workout midweek. The bad weather ended up paying some acclimation dividends; during my long run this past weekend, the dewpoint was a normally intolerable 74, but during a long hard workout in which I took nothing in for over 2 hours I felt unaffected and smooth averaging 5:35 pace for a 17 mile workout, which converting to an ideal marathon race setting converts right to my goal pace. These consistent long workouts set the stage for the super specific workouts which will start in the coming weeks. I want to be able to get more miles in the fast long runs as well as getting some good volume in workouts faster than goal marathon pace.

I want to try and get at least 6 weeks of specific marathon work in, which ideally means 12 workouts. My goal pace for this cycle is 5:20s (2:20 marathon) so these workouts could be some of the following, with all kinds of possible permutations on these:

4 x [4 miles @ 5:20 / 1 mile @ 5:40-5:50]
6 x [2 miles @ 5:05 / 1 mile @ 5:40-5:50]
3 x [3 miles @ 5:10 / 1 mile @ 5:40-5:50]
10-13 miles @ 5:15-5:20
20 miles @ 5:30
24 miles @ 5:40

Obviously these are pretty lofty. If the summer weather keeps up at this level I doubt I'll be able to hit all of these, but I have no problem modifying them for weather because I know my goal pace of 5:20 wouldn't hold up if Chicago was hot and humid.

If I can fit anything else in, these workouts would be supported by some of the following:

50-60 minutes of hill repeats
7-10 mile repeats under 5:00 pace
overdistance runs (26-28 miles with no goal pace or time)
And an infinite variety of shorter speed workouts to work on running efficiency at speed and make 5:20 pace feel slow.

I believe one of the important concepts with long distance workouts, in my case half and full marathon training, is the importance of no true recovery periods in the workout. In classic interval training for track races, true recovery is necessary to many sessions because it's impossible to do, for example, 10 x 400 at mile pace without some amount of true recovery. Since the marathon is so much less intense in terms of heart rate and energy systems used (specifically lactate production and oxygen debt) it becomes both possible and practical to incorporate workouts in which the "recovery" between harder efforts is only 30s a mile slower or so than the pace of the hard segments. I first started working out like this when training for my first serious half marathon in the fall of 2013 and felt that it made a huge difference in my fitness and ability to handle a hard, fast pace for a long time. That's my rationale for all of those interval workouts listed above.

Spring 2016 recap

Now that I've wrapped the spring season, taken 2 weeks off and started back up again, I can look back and evaluate how the last few months of running and racing played out. The most important thing for me to remember is the context of this season. The roots go all the way back to June 2015, when I decided to go for an OTQ at Philly RNR on 10/31. That plan failed, but carried over into a successful race at Jacksonville, which carried over to the Trials in February, which set the tone for the entire spring. To summarize, everything after the trials was gravy. If I had gotten into a car accident and broken my legs I would have still called 2016 a success after February.

After the OT, I did not have a clear path to take. I had basically gotten partway towards being in good marathon shape, and was in very good overall distance shape. The problem I had was that, in my estimation, I didn't have enough time or motivation to refocus and get in good track shape. I also didn't really want to force the mental and physical recovery after the Trials by rushing together a serious spring plan. So, I decided to compromise and race some spring races, but not trying to put together a 100% top-notch performance at any of them. Spring was to be a period of active racing, but not shooting for a lifetime PR in anything.

Because I was in good long-distance shape, I decided to target Cherry Blossom and Broad Street as my two major races. These had the advantage of being relatively local and being a month apart, which gave me flexibility on the remaining weekend. I also like to race that distance. Besides those two races, along the way I put other lower-key races on the schedule that would be good places to win some money.

In the end, the spring season was a successful one by my analysis. I won more money at races than I ever have, ran some new races, met some other runners at my level, even PR'd at 10 miles. I never felt like I was not enjoying myself, but I was glad when it was over and I had the novelty of time off (which I hated). I still haven't come up with a satisfying goal for Fall 2016 yet but I have the luxury of not having to sign up for races 8 months ahead of time. This gives me plenty of time to plan something. Maybe even another marathon? I do know that I want to get back on the track next spring. Sub 14 in the 5k would be a great lifetime PR, and after last spring I promised myself that if I ever got into as good or better shape again, I would go out west to chase a big PR.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, one day at a time.

Broad Street 2016 recap

This year was the second time I've run Broad Street. The first time I ran it, I surprised myself by placed 7th overall and 1st American running 49:56. I remember that as being a really tough race and that I was totally wiped out and well-peaked for that day. This year, I ran slightly better in both place (6th overall this year) and time (49:50), but unlike last time I felt that this spring was a bit more relaxed of a racing cycle, coming after the winter. Looking at it this way it's nice to see that, even at a slight depression in training and racing, I still was able to run better than I could in a perfect race 2 years ago here.

The race itself was overall a little slower than some other years. Perhaps this was due to the weather, or the lack of African depth up front - only 2 Africans in the top 8. The weather was about as bad as it gets in early May, with a cold rain lasting throughout the morning. This was fine with me during the race, but was obviously not ideal before and after.

The race itself played out pretty well. I had people to run with or to chase just ahead the entire time. My only regret is that I let a gap open up between me and a group of 4 ahead of me in the last few miles. I beat 2 out of 4, but with two guys less than 8 seconds ahead of me it leaves me thinking that if only I could have held on in that pack I could have placed 4th overall instead of 6th.

Some pictures from the helicopters. I'm in the bright green.
Early on in the race with a big group up front:


Later on after the big lead pack broke up:

Big update - mid-spring 2016

I haven't put anything up here in a while and am long overdue for an update because of a couple things.

First of all, I scheduled a pretty busy spring racing schedule for about 4-5 weeks racing nearly every weekend. My broad outline was to schedule two big 10 milers (Cherry Blossom and Broad Street) a month apart, being the first weekend of April and May respectively, and fill in the rest of the schedule with money races from there.

I caught the injury bug in mid-March after resuming hard training post-OT. I suspect that it was due to jumping into hard hill work, both up and down hills, that aggravated some tendinitis in my left foot. I was nervous about this because it hurt over the navicular, but after getting it examined it was determined to likely be soft tissue inflammation. Translation: train through it, ice and advil. I am still dealing with this, albeit in a controlled and slowly improving manner. It did however take me out for about a week, some of which was spent watching March Madness on the bike trainer.

After getting over that scare and back into trainers (and flats), I was hoping for a good run at Cherry Blossom. Coming up to the race, the weather was forecasted to be very bad for fast times, with temps in the mid-30s and high winds.

Before I discuss the race specifically, I do want to talk about the elite treatment, hospitality and accommodations. If you ever get a chance to run in the elite field at this race, DO IT. It was a phenomenal experience. The hotel was top-notch, the hospitality suite was open nearly all the time for food, drinks, whatever. All meals were comped. The staff was wonderful, very nice and seemed to really enjoy their jobs. Honestly coming off of the OT experience where the USATF staff treated us relatively badly, it was a real breath of fresh air. Emily was able to stay with me as a guest, and we made some new friends on the trip, which of course is one thing we all love about our sport.

Back to the race. The weather was actually not as terrible as it was forecasted to be. In the technical meeting the day before, the race director had taken cautious measures and removed most things on the course that could potentially turn into wind-borne missiles. Mile markers, most tents and the entire awards ceremony were removed and everyone was encouraged to finish the race and get out as soon as possible to keep problems to a minimum. Don't get me wrong, it was definitely windy, but no 50 mph gusts or 30 mph sustained winds as the predictions showed.

The start was conservative as people were worried about the wind. For about 2 miles I hung on the back of the lead group. Going over the Potomac bridge into Virginia, we were jogging along into the wind because no one up front wanted to sacrifice themselves. Suddenly someone got impatient and broke up the field. After that everyone split up into smaller groups. I linked up with a couple guys, one of whom I would run the rest of the race with.

The wind was intermittently a head and tail wind, but I think it was pretty fair out on the course. By that I mean it didn't seem like it was disproportionately a headwind, although the last 2 miles straight into it were pretty tough. I had grouped myself with 3 others by the time we turned into that so we took turns blocking it up the last stretch. My one tactical blunder was to try and break the group I was with with a mile to go with a hard surge. I ended up breaking myself and getting beat by one of the guys I was with, but was able to outkick another for 15th overall and (I believe) 8th American. This gave me the pleasant surprise of making $300, before taxes of course. Time didn't matter much to me on this day, but I ran 51:18 for the record and believe the time could have been somewhere between 1 and 2 minutes faster depending on the level of drafting being done.

Overall I had a good experience at this race, obviously colored by the excellent elite treatment, and would love to come back again. On a still-air day at 40 degrees this course is one of the world's fastest and a great place to PR for the distance.